Thinking that she wasn’t hitting it hard enough for the bat to work, she gave the giant another volley of whacks.
When she was out of breath, the giant finally turned its head around. It looked at Zoey like she was an irritating mosquito.
“Put my friend down,” said Zoey boldly.
She inched forward and faced the creature. “Let him go! This is your last warning.”
She squared her shoulders and raised herself on her toes, trying to make herself taller.
The mystic’s laugh sounded like the rumble of an earthquake.
“He die. You die. Agents all die!”
“Nobody’s dying, giant,” she hissed. “At least not us! I can’t say the same about you or your buddy over there.”
The mystic looked at the motionless giant on the ground behind Zoey. It looked back at her, frowned severely, and growled deep inside its throat like a lion about to tear apart its prey. Its cold pink eyes sent a chill down Zoey’s back. If she didn’t come up with a plan soon, the giant was going to rip her apart like a well-done turkey.
With great effort, Simon raised one of his arms and pointed to his own head. “Hit. Head,” he croaked.
And then Zoey understood.
The giant lunged at her with its free hand.
Zoey ducked, jumped to the side, and came up over the other side of the great creature. She tried to jump and hit it in the head, but she could only reach its upper back. She held her weapon with her right hand and leaped in the air as if she was going for a basketball slam dunk, but the mystic was too tall.
“ZOEY! WATCH OUT!”
A massive fist came hurtling towards her head.
She jumped backwards, tripped, and fell, but miraculously still held onto the bat. She rolled on the ground and then scrambled to her feet. If she stopped moving, the giant would crush her. The mystic wailed furiously, thrashing Simon’s body around like a ragdoll as it went for her again.
Zoey winced at the pain on her friend’s face. His eyes were slowly closing. His skin had gone from red to a scary purple-blue. He couldn’t breathe. She had to do something or she would lose him.
And then it hit her.
Just as the great brute charged at her again, she balanced the bat in her right hand like a harpoon, aimed, and fired.
Maybe it was the practice she’d had using the boomerang for months, or maybe it was luck, but the bat soared in the air like a fat arrow and hit the giant smack in the forehead with an echoing thump.
The giant looked surprised that she had actually hit it. It wavered like a great tree in the wind as the same mysterious silver bubbles popped around its head. Whatever was affecting the creature, Zoey could tell it was fighting it. The giant’s body shook, and sweat trickled down its horrid face. It took in rapid breaths in an attempt to overcome whatever was attacking it. It seemed stronger than the other giant, and for a horrible moment, Zoey thought they were doomed and that the bat hadn’t worked. But then Simon slipped from the beast’s grip, and the great beast froze mid-step, toppled over, and landed on the ground in a cloud of dust.
“Simon!” Zoey cried out in relief. Simon staggered to his feet on his own, his head still attached to his body.
He smiled weakly as he rubbed his sore neck. “I’m still breathing.”
Zoey grabbed Simon in a bear hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she squeezed him tightly and then let him go.
“You had me worried for a minute there. I thought you were a goner. Your face had turned blue. I don’t know what I would have done if the giant had killed you.”
Simon’s face reddened, and he pulled away from Zoey awkwardly.
“I’m not that easily killed,” he said as he wiped the giant’s disgusting yellow spit from his face. “Yuck! Besides, we’re almost like real agents. We know how to defend ourselves, don’t we? I think we did a pretty awesome job, all things considered.”
“Right,” laughed Zoey. Simon always had a way of putting a smile on her face. “Of course we did.”
“Why are you laughing?” said Simon. “I almost had him you know . . . he just . . . he just surprised me. And I dropped my bat, that’s all. I could’ve taken him, easily. I’ve been working out—check these out.”
He rolled up his sleeve and flexed his raisin-sized bicep muscle. “I’ve got killer arms. Girls dig that.”
Zoey covered her eyes and laughed harder.
“Go ahead, laugh, but you know I’m cut like Bruce Lee.”
Simon kicked the giant. “That’s for choking me, stinker. Told you that you were going to get it. And now it’s nap time, big guy.”
Zoey inspected the giant a little closer and made a face. “They smell like they’ve been rolling around in garbage and then washed in sewer water. No, I take that back. I don’t think they’ve ever bathed. EVER.”
“I don’t think bathing is a requirement with giants,” informed Simon as he fought unsuccessfully with the yellow snot that stuck to his jacket.
“In fact, I think the more they smell the better in a giant’s world. Maybe that’s how they attract the females . . . the more they stink, the more they get.”
“Eww, that’s nasty.” When Zoey laughed, she cried out and held her rib cage gently.
Simon frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I’ve might have broken a few ribs—”
Suddenly, Zoey felt the ground shake beneath her sneakers. Thunder boomed in the bay, and she heard shouts and cries. Her first thought was another giant.
Zoey and Simon shared a worried look and then turned towards the sudden commotion. Down by the beach people had gathered and were pointing at something. Zoey rushed over to the edge of the small rise to get a better look.
An oval-shaped, blue shimmering light hovered above the tan-colored beach and wavered like an upside-down pool of water.
Zoey’s heart thumped against her broken ribs. “Simon, are my eyes playing tricks on me or is that another portal?”
“Yup, that’s a portal all right.”
“And am I going mad or can the Mutes see it?”
Simon stood by her side. “Uh . . . I think they can. Yes, they most definitely can. This is bad, Zoey. This is really, really bad.”
Zoey’s chest tightened. Any second now a mystic would cross over, and there was no telling which mystic or how many of them. It could be more giants, but it could also be something a lot more evil and sinister.
Two guys and a girl circled the portal as they inspected it. They seemed to think this was some kind of joke, like the portal was the result of some sort of visual effects stunt. They laughed and shoved one another playfully, inching closer and closer to the wavering light of the portal.
“But how can that be?” asked Zoey, feeling more and more nervous as the Mutes ventured closer to the portal. “Unless I missed something on the memo, I thought only Sevenths could see portals. How is this even possible? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Beats me,” answered Simon as he pulled a strand of yellow mucous from his hair. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of this. I mean, everything is a little out of whack since feline-face did the Great Jointing—”
“Great Junction.”
“Yeah, that thing,” said Simon. He inspected a strange brown clump on his jacket that might have been pudding but definitely wasn’t.
“I think you’re right.” Zoey shifted uneasily.
The portal had attracted nearly twenty people now. The curious teenagers moved closer and closer to it. Her heart beat faster and faster. She felt like she was going to jump out of her skin.
“When the second giant appeared—that portal—it closed right away,” noted Zoey. “How long do you think this portal is going to stay open?”
Simon shook his head. “No idea. Each portal is unique. Think of them as different doors. Some are small while some are huge. Some stay open longer than others.”
“Is there a way to close them?”
Simon shrugged. “I don’t know.
When you think about it, the portals are forced open, right? Then it only makes sense we should be able to close them.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “We should get back soon. I don’t know how long the giants are going to stay down.”
“But what about the portal and all those people?” asked Zoey, “We can’t just leave them!”
“We can’t do anything about it now. The best thing we can do is get back to the agency as soon as possible and let them know. I’m sure they’ll know what to do.”
Zoey knew he was right. Both giants were unconscious, but she knew that hauling them back was going to prove difficult. There was nothing they could do about the portal now besides telling the agency about it as soon as possible. She hoped they could close it somehow. But what about all the people who could see it? How were the agents going to explain or fix that? She would have to worry about it later.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Zoey as she turned around and started to make her way back to the comatose giants. “Let’s go—”
“Uh-oh.”
Zoey halted and then rushed back beside Simon. Her heart sank.
The group of teenagers was dangerously close to the portal, so close that if one of them decided to reach out now they would touch it.
“No,” said Zoey, exasperated. “Oh God, no.”
“Don’t do it, man,” said Simon. His face had gone from red to white in a flash. “Don’t do it.”
The curious teens laughed and shoved one another, all trying to get to the front as though they stood in front of a large mirror. And then before anyone could stop him, one of the teens reached out and touched the portal with his fingers. The tips of his fingers grazed the surface of the portal, and he withdrew them quickly. Even from a distance Zoey could see his hand was unscathed. The teen gave his friends a cocky smile and stepped closer—
“NO!” shouted Zoey at the top of her lungs. But she was too far away, and her voice was drowned by the sound of the waves.
It was like watching a horror movie when one of the actors went into the room where the murderer waited, hidden behind the door. Even if you shouted no, don’t go in, at the screen, they always went it.
Zoey tore down the hill, forgetting the giants and Simon, and raced towards the portal on the beach.
“No! Get back! Don’t go near it!” she bellowed between gasps of air. “Stop! Get back!”
The teens halted and looked back at her, and for a moment, she felt relief. But then they laughed and turned back towards the portal. Maybe they thought she was part of the performance?
“This isn’t some practical joke!” Zoey’s thighs burned as she tried to run faster in the loose sand.
Too late.
Zoey watched helpless and horrified as the three teens walked right into the portal. They smiled as though they were in a circus performance—as though it wasn’t real, so it couldn’t harm them.
And then the portal swallowed them. It shimmered one last time and vanished with a crack.
Chapter 3
Old Enemies
Zoey and Simon returned to the Hive and secured the giants in a Maximum-Security Holding Cell. Then they hurried to Room 1D to report back to Agent Vargas. He confirmed that the portal incident on the beach in Houghton Bay, New Zealand was not an isolated case.
“So far, we’ve gathered accounts of at least three hundred of these portals opening all over the world,” said the big agent as he pushed back his chair and stood.
For a human, Agent Vargas was the tallest and largest man Zoey had ever seen. He could have easily have passed as one of the Giant’s distant cousins. He wore a simple V-neck shirt tucked neatly into a pair of black pants. His long blond hair was tied in a braid that hung over his large chest.
She couldn’t help it, but with his bulging muscles, he always made her think of a modern-day Viking.
“And from what we’ve learned,” continued Agent Vargas, “illegal mystics only stepped through about half of them. But the other half . . . .”
He paused for a moment. “They just appeared. But nothing came out. It was like they had opened on their own.”
“Unfortunately, these new portals were visible to the curious Mutes. When the portals vanished, they took hundreds of unsuspecting people with them.”
Zoey sat stunned as she listened. She didn’t want to be held accountable for all the people lost in the portals. Nonetheless, she felt personally responsible.
“So do we know what’s causing these portals to open?” said Simon as though he had read Zoey’s mind. He sat on the desk next to her, and she felt a sting in her chest as he finished.
Agent Vargas pressed his big hands on the desk. When he looked up, his blue eyes met Zoey’s, and she dropped her gaze. “There’s only one thing that comes to mind—that woman.”
“The cat woman,” interrupted Simon. “I knew it! I knew it had something to do with her royal feline ugliness. I think if we can manage to—” Simon pressed his mouth shut.
He looked like he wanted to argue, but he remained silent when he saw Agent Vargas’s scowl. His ears turned bright red.
Agent Vargas cleared his throat and continued.
“Yes, Simon, I’m afraid it is the only plausible explanation. But for now, you kids should concentrate on your field assignments. You still have a lot to learn and require hours of experience before you can truly call yourselves agents—even with your OSC badges. I’m sure we’ll know more about these portals in the coming weeks.”
Zoey noticed that the lines around Agent Vargas’s eyes and forehead had deepened. She knew he wasn’t telling them the whole truth. She was sure the Agency had discovered something far worse. But what could be worse than unexpected portals opening up and snatching people away with them?
Dread weighed Zoey down. “Agent Vargas? Can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” answered the big man. “What is it?”
Zoey swallowed hard. “What happens to the people who disappeared into the portal?”
“Oh, man, that’s right!” said Simon overdramatically as he pressed his hands on his head. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Agent Vargas stared at them both without speaking for a moment, as though he either didn’t want to tell them or simply didn’t know what happened.
“I’m afraid their fate is not a very good one,” he said finally. “I fear most of those poor souls are probably already dead—killed by mystics. And if by some miracle some survived, then they probably wished that they were dead already.”
“What do you mean?” asked Zoey. “What’s going to happen to them?”
She suppressed a shiver as she imagined the teens she had seen on the beach being ripped apart by eyeless, black-winged Duyen demons.
There would be nothing left of them but piles of clothes stained in their blood.
Agent Vargas sighed. “Once the Mutes cross over into the Nexus the veil will be lifted. They’ll be able to see every mystic, as we do here, but only in that other world. The mystics won’t understand the difference and will think the Mutes are agents. They’ll kill some and take others as prisoners. They will torture them to get back at us. They will die the most horrific and painful deaths. It saddens me to think we can’t stop it from happening.”
Zoey and Simon stared at each other without speaking. She thought of the teenagers on the beach again and felt a stabbing pain in her heart. They had thought it was a joke. They didn’t deserve to die. She prayed that some had survived and hid somehow. She remembered seeing vast red mountains. Maybe there were places to hide in the Nexus?
“So you think they’re all dead?” Zoey’s throat was very dry. “We can never get them back?”
The big agent looked at Zoey, his lips pressed together in a hard line, but he didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what to answer.
“That really sucks,” said Simon gloomily. “I mean, how can they survive? They don’t even have weapons or the proper training to defend themselves against the
mystics. They’ll probably die of fright when they realize the monsters from their childhood nightmares are real.”
Zoey’s heart raced.
“You think no one can survive there? Not even an agent?”
Simon’s head snapped in her direction.
Zoey’s insides twisted as she thought about her mother trapped somewhere in that other world. She knew she had to be extra careful about how much she was willing to tell Agent Vargas. He was clever and could very easily read between the lines. If the Agency knew what she was planning to do, they would most definitely lock her up.
Agent Vargas watched Zoey carefully.
“What have you heard?” There was something strange in his expression, like she had discovered some secret.
“What if an agent accidentally crossed into the Nexus,” said Zoey, with tension in her voice. “Surely they could survive. I mean, like Simon said, they would have the necessary skills, right? They could defend themselves, right? So it’s possible?”
“Yes,” answered Agent Vargas, and excitement fluttered in Zoey. “What are you getting at with this? Zoey, I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?”
Zoey had gotten her answer, and she wasn’t going to tell him anything else.
Agent Vargas was about to drill her when the door opened, and Tristan and Stuart strolled in.
Tristan’s dark almond eyes caught hers, and her heart did a somersault. As much as she tried to ignore the feeling, it always crept up on her whenever Tristan was near. She hated herself for being so sensitive. There was no getting away from it—Tristan was her weakness.
He was dressed all in black except for a tight blue t-shirt. Although he wasn’t yet fifteen, he was built like a professional athlete. His thick brown hair framed his chiseled face and high cheekbones.
Zoey remembered how vibrant he had looked the first time she had seen him at the abandoned theatre. He looked taller now, thinner and a little more worn, like he was taking on too many assignments and getting too little rest. His dark eyes looked older too, somehow, full of concern and responsibility.
Simon hadn’t changed much. He seemed more comfortable in his own skin now. He’d always had too much hyper energy, but he seemed to handle it better. He was better at thinking things through than the rest of them.
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